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Published: March 31st 2012
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Sea eagles I am not good very geography or stuff related to that, so don't know the exact details about size of Fraser island. Think it is a pure sand island that is 160km long and some 40km wide, correct if I am wrong. Anyways, it is popular place for backpackers because of the natural forests, hikes, lakes, creeks, dingoes, ship wrecks and 4wd driving on the sandy beach. It can be accessed by boat from either Rainbow beach to the south or hervey bay to the north. We booked a 3 day 2 night Fraser island tour with a bonus 2 nights stay at backpackers at Rainbow beach... Most tours are booked through backpacker hostels such as base X, Peter pans or happy travels...
We found a package for Fraser island 3 day 2 nights with 2 extra nights backpackers accommodation on Rainbow beach, 3 days 2 nights accommodation on whitsundays cruise for $600. As for all tours, you need to call the actual tour operator 48 hours before start of your trip to confirm. We arrived a day early in rainbow beach before the start of our Fraser island tour. Rainbow beach is really really small with few streets, few shops
and a pub by the beach... The beach is really nice, good for a swim and there is a hike that takes you to explore the massive sand dunes 15 minutes walk from the hostel... You can slide down the massive dunes on a body board... Food and alcohol are very expensive in rainbow beach, a cucumber costs $4!
So if you are driving, get your alcohol before you get to rainbow beach... We had a few cheap meals at backpackers for $10 and that is the the cheapest you can get. For budget reasons, we all brought goons to Fraser island, they are really bad for you, but you are guaranteed to get pretty wasted on goons and wake up with a massive hang over! The trip started at 7am, usually 24 people in a tour, divided into 8 per car! This is a guided self-drive tour, total 4 4wd jeeps, the 4th car being the tour guide's car... Each person in the car can drive the 4wd at some stages...
We had an awesome group of people in our car, Ash from England worked as a star chef for a Gordon Ramsay restaurant back home, so
we made him our chef, then there is Pontus from Sweden, mines and explosives engineer from the Swedish army, got some awesome stories and a really cool guy... he is traveling Australia with his friend from back home, Tobias, who is really funny as well, great to be drinking with these guys along with Hanna and Malin, all Swedes! They got me pretty tippsy and after that we went to a Norwegian camp next to us and partied with the Norwegians... SWEDEN VS NORWAY... think the Swedes won...
The other cars were made up of mainly Germans and more swedes... The drive on the sand beach was awesome, on hard sand you can get around 80km/h, though the speed limit on island is 60km/h... Lake wobby is a 45 minutes drive inland from the beach, through some tough sand tracks and quite challenging at times. The lake is fresh water from what I can remember, nice swimming spot and it does get really deep quickly, so if you are not a strong swimmer, stick to the edge! There are some big fish in the lake, visiblefrom the bank, but the water visibility is not great in the lake,
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On the way to Rainbow beach as I tried to snorkel and got about 1 meter visibility...
Apart from lake wobbly, make sure you guide take you to Eli creek, it is a fresh water creek along the beach, water is really refreshing, but freezing... you can walk upstream about 500 meters and jump in the water and let the current take you down to the beach, but it is absolutely freezing. We used the creek as a shower place as there are no showers at the camp sites. 5km from the creek is a spectacular rocky cliff face, think it is called Indian heads, takes 10 minutes to walk up some steep hill, then you get a panoromic of the island and see the massive waves crushing against the cliff... Very sharp drop off around the edge of the cliff, get close to edge to get some awesome views of the ocean below, but don't fall off! Lake mackanzie is a fresh water lake 10km inland, accessed by 4wd driving through some really tough terrain and if it is raining, as it is the case with us, this will test the driving skills...
The upside is the lake is crystal clear and
is great for a swim. Something else you should be aware before you book the Fraser island tour is that apart from exploring the natural beauty of the island, there is heaps of drinking, especially goon, as most of the people going on these tours are young backpackers, so once you have seen the nature during the day, then night time is reserve for drinking... We had an awesome time drinking with the swedes and few Germans and later on the second night, Isabel, a Norwegian in our group, came across another camp with 14 Norwegians in it. So, we went along with all the swedes to the other camp... Great party... Few people ended up passing out on the sand and others had to be held upright whilst trying to take a piss... But the top prize goes to 2 Norwegian girls who during the night, saw a dingo, freaked out and ran into each other, colliding heads, one ended up with a massive black eye...
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